developement

It’s tax refund season! You know what that means, the government took your money that you earned for a whole year, and now has decided to let you have it back, interest free! Wow they really are looking out for us aren’t they… Not really.

YES IT IS A REFUND

Everyone gets so excited every year to get THEIR money back, it blows my mind when people come up to me asking how much I got back. Then we compare amounts, and when they find out that most of the time I had to pay the government money they look at me like I’ve made a horrible mistake. But let’s think about this, I changed my withholdings to keep the maximum amounts. That means that I can put what I would have had taken out in taxes into a fund of some kind, then when it comes time to pay uncle sam the NECESSARY AMOUNT (no more no less!), I take it out of the fund and use the interest gained as a cushion to be compounded every year. So in the end this person fought tooth and nail to get whatever money they could back, looking in every loophole and tax bracket they could. While I literally made money on the money every year, and never had to worry about paying too much. Sounds like a win to me…

WHAT TO DO WITH THE REFUND?

Well you can go out and get that new tv you’ve been wanting, that new gaming system or a down payment on a car you can barely afford. But what do all of these things have in common, they’re liabilities! A liability is something that you spend money on, then you spend money on and keep spending money on it, the liability never yields anything of value to you! Instead how about you take time on the internet to invest in something that will actually help, go to a seminar on how to start a business online, look into real-estate. I wouldn’t recommend buying stocks though, I did that one year and it was a lesson well learned, it takes much more thought and consideration than buying something that will give you knowledge or income.

START A NEW HABBIT

Look at things you buy from now on as an asset (money maker) or a liability (money taker). Learning and applying these two words will yield incredible returns in most areas of your life! And the sooner you can fix your taxes to change the withholdings to keep the money that’s YOURS, the better. Just go to your HR person and ask to have your withholdings done so that you keep the maximum, this is easiest if you’re on a salary because you can look at your taxes from last year and just invest that amount monthly. Then just sit back and enjoy the interest earned and knowledge applied 🙂

If you want to see true LEAN GAINZZZ, you need to apply a few of the techniques we are going too look at that I did for about 4 months and saw some pretty awesome results. None of these are life altering, and if anything you’re going to shorten your time at the gym as well as the dinner table! Even for the “HARD GAINER” these rules still apply, so enough chatting and let’s get into this!

BIS AND TRIS LATS AND PECS QUADS AND GLUTES…ABS

If you have picked up a fitness magazine in the last 15 years you have seen this structure for your workout. And as we all know, Monday is national chest day (this is one of those universal laws that spans continents and cultures). But where did this start and why is it still held as the norm if most people who follow it aren’t all jacked and swole? Well because it was most likely based off of an IFBB bodybuilders workout 90% of the time, and they aren’t exactly known for testing. So if you are on a cycle of your favorite steroid cocktail, then this will be a fantastic workout for you! However if you chose the natural (and longevity oriented) route, we need to re-design this mold.

COMPOUNDING GAINZZZZ

So if you’re a natural lifter and want to know how to get the most out of your body and time in the gym, we need to look at what’s going to get you the most bang for your buck. The answer is COMPOUND MOVEMENTS. Sure it feels great to curl those 40s for reps, but unless your on a cycle(steroids), there really isn’t much use. However if you do pullups with 3 different grips, now you’re on the road to gainz! Let’s think about it, if you do an ISOLATION move you’re hitting one muscle and destroying it, but if you do a compound move like a pullup, you’re getting most of the body involved while hitting the necessities(bis and lats). Same goes for bench, squats and deadlifts, you’re going to get an over all better result and hormonal response.

THE REASON STEROIDS WORK SO WELL

Steroids increase testosterone and natural hormone levels to increase the speed at which your body can recover and apply force. So naturally if you destroy your bis and tris in the gym breaking up the muscle tissue, and you are taking steroids, your body will work many times faster and efficiently to repair the damage and have you back to normal(with improvements due to the stimulus of stress from the weights) in about 24-48 hrs.. Where as if you are a natural lifter doing the same exact routine, you’ll leave the gym with the same broken down tissue, but will need about 8 DAYS to recover and get a fraction of the results. Now that might have painted a case for you to take steroids, and that’s your choice, just know what your getting into before you start.

SO HERE’S HOW YOU DO IT NATURALLY

LIFT HEAVY (80%-90% 5×5 or whatever HEAVY program you follow), at least 4 days per week. As a natural lifter your body needs a strong stimulus to create enough of a “need” to build and keep new weight. So CONSISTENT heavy weight applied over time will spark this response. And to build the size of the muscle I recommend choosing two COMPOUND complimentary moves, for example, shoulder press super set with a row. Rep scheme will look like this for muscle building, 2-3 sets to failure of first move and 15 reps of second…THAT’S IT! Don’t push past this, because there’s something called the law of diminishing returns, meaning it’s all useless after this point. Your muscles are broken down (and should feel it) and your body has a reason to NEED to grow stronger and bigger, now focus on recovery. Weights for the muscle building portion should be 40%-60% of one rep max in first lift(In this example if your shoulder press 1rm is 180, you use 105).

Wow this thing is long…(that’s what she said), but it’s all proven on myself and others, so take it or leave it!

Along with living a perceived extreme diet in the form of the Paleo Diet, I like to experiment on myself with what other successful people are doing, whether it is business or fitness, I love to find my limits. And so begins the newest experiment.

THE COLD THEORY

The name is pretty much self explanitory, what we are doing is modifying our environment as much as possible (within reason), to make it as cold as possible all the time. I’m not gonna lie, this is not the most comfortable thing I’ve ever done.

WHAT IS INVOLVED

Let’s start with what I perceived to be the easiest to the most difficult. First all water that is taken in needs to be ICE COLD, not room temperature but ice cold. Whenever possible when time permits, take a 30 minute nap with an ice pack on the back of your neck. Now things get a little rougher, when you go to bed at night don’t sleep under the covers at all, not even a sheet, and keep a fan on to circulate the air in the room. Now for the hardest thing in my opinion, the cold shower twice per day. Yep I said it, cold shower, one of the most uncomfortable and longest 15 minutes of my day.

WHY….?

I won’t lie, I started this chanllenge to gain a more asthetic physique. The way this cold theory (I call it a theory still because I haven’t seen the results) works is the result of studying Michael Phelps’ diet of 12,000 calories while training for the Olympics. If it were as simple as calories in and calories out he would have had to have butterfly stroked for 23 hours per day to reach 8,000 calories. So what was the factor that allowed him to consume those calories while maintaining his weight??

THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY

In lamence terms, being in a colder environment forces our bodies to work harder to maintane our core temperature of 98.6 degrees. This can allow the average person to burn many times more calories. Wish me luck!

If you’ve been alive for more than a year you’ve heard of the paleo diet I’m sure. So why in the world do you need to bother with it, and what could it benefit you?

WELL FOR ONE, IT’S NOT A “NEW” THING

We are a society that has only been removed from an agricultural lifestyle for about two generations (200 years). Which in the grand scheme of our history as a species is equivalent to a few months in the average persons life. But in this short time we have replaced the hunter gatherer lifestyle that our bodies have come to know and thrive on, with a man-made highly processed garbage diet.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH HOW WE EAT?

The shorter answer to this question is “What’s right?”. Let’s start with what our bodies need to thrive; our bodies need glucose (sugar), protein and fats as macro-nutrients, along with the micro-nutrients from most plants and fruits. Now the marketing geniuses that are in charge have manipulated the minds of people into being scared of things that have any sort of fat content, so they put labels like “fat free” or “low fat” on all sorts of products. But what they don’t tell us is that what it lacks in fat it makes up for in sugar, which when broken down is generally stored in the body as…you guessed it, FAT. So technically you could slap a 0% fat label on a sack of sugar and it would be completely true (I’m actually surprised I haven’t seen this yet)

SO WHY THE PALEO DIET?

Why not? It’s only you giving your body everything it has been used to for the past 1,800 years, and cutting out all the junk that our bodies are still trying to figure out how to process. The Paleo diet is the only way that the body is able to take care of itself the way that God intended. Have you heard the stories of people who had stage 4 cancer and were on deaths doorstep, then decided to go the whole foods route as a last ditch effort. And most of the time they have a full recovery and beat the pants off cancer! Take that science!

PALEO IS ONLY FOR SKINNY PEOPLE, I WANNA BE JACKED!

I held this belief as well, for about ten minutes. I can tell you from my personal experience that I cut down from a fluffy 174 lbs. to a lean 163 lbs. with the Paleo diet. AND THEN JUMPED TO 178 LBS.! That’s right, I GAINED weight on a 85% Paleo diet! (Yes 85%, no person should punish themselves or deprive themselves of what they enjoy for the sake of “Paleo Glory” I’m no exception) But we can talk about all of this later, for now I just want to shed some light on the Paleo life. Till next time.

So it’s been a while huh, I had to take a little personal time to do a little “soul searching” to find out what I want for my families future as well as my own. (job wise, hobbies and DUN DUN DUNNNN….kids)

We don’t have kids yet!

Thankfully that much is true, not that I don’t want kids at all, but I’m only 25 so I want to grind as hard as I can now without taking time from family to build a life that supports my family with time and money. So that is what’s been going on with me!

What do we do now?

Well I’m eager and excited to hit some new goals that I have set for myself and providing the best quality content that I can! One thing that I have been working on recently I have picked up the habit of cooking! My dad has always been an amazing cook, and until recently I thought that the gene might have skipped a generation. UNTIL I merged my love of fitness and cooking to begin the new family tradition of…

PALEO MEAL PREP

I’m not sure if there are that many athletes that read these posts, but if you are, then you know the struggle with balancing healthy eating with fitness and life. It seems like the world wakes up before us 10 minutes earlier every day to find new ways to get us off track when it comes to a healthy athletic diet! Also when we go out with friends it’s not always the most convenient (or cheapest) option to keep on the paleo train.

MEAL PREP SAVES ME DAILY

Just having the right options pre prepared in the house limits the “slip ups” to virtually NONE! Any other time I was home and knew I needed something to fuel me for a few more hours till the next meal, I would see cookies and cake and justify the “benefits” of the fast acting glycimic index of that “food”. Needless to say it never worked out in my favor long term… BUT having the right options through the meal prep is an insane blessing!

SO HERE’S TO THE FUTURE

I’ll be talking more about food along with the success and uplifting material I have before, but I wanted to share this with you all in case there are some people out there who know this struggle as well!

We are going to take a break from the mindset thinking to practical exercise on this one! Now I know we have all heard it before, “I’m gonna loose weight this year!” or “I’m going from couch to 5k this year!” And these goals are great, and if you happen to still be following your New Years “resolution” to loose weight, then you are in the top 20%! So a well deserved congratulations to you!

Now on to the topic at hand, RUNNING

It’s almost inevitable that when someone says they want to loose weight or become more healthy, they’re basically saying “I’m going to start running and or eating right.” Eating right is probably the one thing we can all stand to learn more about by the way, but that’s for another day. But what is so magical about running? Does your body recognize this activity as a major reason to ignite the fat burning warp drive? Or is it that if you go on a 45 min run that it’s the special time frame that will make the magic happen?

Or is it….

That if you do anything with a moderate amount of intensity for 45 minutes straight that your body responds. The truth is that there is nothing special about running at all, except for the fact that it’s the most convenient thing to do, and if something meets the needs (doesn’t require extra work or preparation) it’s guaranteed people will do it. So since you were probably born with legs, have land to run on and don’t have any real dangers waiting outside, why not run?

But let’s think about this running thing

Every year a sports science journal does a pole on which exercise is the most dangerous, guess which is #1, RUNNING! Now they define “dangerous” as most risk for injury, but why is running dangerous? I haven’t heard of anyone breaking a leg or bleeding out on a run…but I have heard almost everyone who decides to start running in January start complaining about knee area and below pain around March. Hence why running is by and large the most dangerous sport every year (even ahead of CrossFit). Most of this however is due to the fact that running form is never considered, people never think about the fact that since they have horrible posture sitting and standing that there’s no way that could carry over when they run. DING DING DING, that’s the reason! If you move like a lazy turd walking and sitting, you’re gonna amplify that about ten times once you do it faster. But your posture is your battle…Just know that’s the root of why you’re snapping your knees and ankles.

Are you ready for the solution

Take the same time period you would have been running, and do some functional exercise! Functional is the keyword, squats, lunges. skates, jump rope, jumping, uni lateral movements etc..There is nothing magical about running, it’s just the fact that you’re in constant motion for 45 mins + that brings a fat loss response. Now I’m not saying stop running all together, but moderate it where it is needed. If it’s your thing and that just puts you in the zone and you have mastered your running posture and technique, then go for it! Someone is going to win the local 5k so why not you with the amazing form! But if general weight loss is the goal then look into body weight work starting out, then look into CrossFit and then compete in the games (KIDDING).

In Conclusion

Stay active at a moderate high intensity for 45 mins+ per day, it doesn’t have to happen all at once (in fact it’s better if it is spread through out the day). Just do something to move and move well!